In automated product packaging systems, articles such as cans, bottles, individually wrapped food-stuffs, etc., generally are fed into a product packaging machine where such articles can be grouped or otherwise sorted and thereafter placed within or wrapped with a product cartoning material such as a paperboard, cardboard or other, similar material. Such product cartons can be provided as a series of folded and glued carton sleeves that are open at their ends for insertion of the products therein, or can include substantially flat carton blanks that will be folded by the product packaging machine and wrapped about a group of articles or products placed thereon. Typically, the carton sleeves or carton blanks will be loaded into a carton magazine for the product packaging machine in stacks, which carton magazine then will feed individual carton sleeves or carton blanks into the packaging machine for loading with products or for wrapping about a series of product groups.
The cartons, whether formed as carton sleeves or carton blanks, themselves typically are formed by outside vendors who ship the cartons in sleeve or blank form stacked in boxes or cases. Accordingly, before the cartons can be loaded into a carton magazine of a packaging machine, the cartons themselves first must be removed from their cases and thereafter stacked or loaded into the carton magazine. Even though automated carton stacking and loading systems have been developed for automatically loading stacks of cartons within the carton magazines of packaging machine or similar automated packaging equipment, it is still necessary to first remove the stacks of cartons from their containers or cases and thereafter load the stacks of cartons on the magazines or on automatic magazine loaders for feeding to the magazine for a packaging machine.
Generally, even though some automated removal systems have been developed, the removal of cartons from their boxes or cases typically has been a manual operation requiring an operator to manually remove the cases from about the cartons, and thereafter stack or restack the cartons, including in some cases inverting the cartons, and load them on a magazine loader or directly into the carton magazine of a packaging machine. Such manual operations can, however, cause repetitive strain injuries due to the repetitive handling of heavy carton loads by workers. In addition, when the cartons are removed from their cases, either manually or by current automated systems, it is often difficult to maintain the cartons in an ordered stack and prevent at least some of the cartons within the cases from being lifted with the case when the case is removed due to friction between the carton edges and case walls. As a result, workers often have to restack or remove portions of the stack of cartons from a case after the case has been removed, which takes additional time and can further contribute to repetitive strain injuries, or cause inefficiencies in operation.
Accordingly, it can be seen that a need exists for a system and method for removal of stacked cartons from their cases or containers that addresses the foregoing and other related and unrelated problems in the art.